Table of Contents
- Introduction
- The Landscape of Digital Education: Where to Sell an Online Course
- The Hidden Costs of Third-Party Platforms
- Why Your Shopify Store is the Best Hub for Courses
- Tevello: Turning Shopify into a Learning Powerhouse
- Practical Scenarios: How Real Merchants Succeed
- Diving Into the Features: What Makes a Great Course?
- The Financial Impact: Transaction Fees vs. Fixed Costs
- Owning Your Customer Journey
- Getting Started: A Step-by-Step Path
- The Future of the Shopify Learning Powerhouse
- Conclusion
- Frequently Asked Questions
Introduction
Did you know that by 2026, the global e-learning market is projected to reach nearly $400 billion? For the average merchant, this represents more than just a growing industry; it represents an escape from the crushing weight of physical inventory costs and shipping logistics. Imagine a product that you create once and sell ten thousand times without ever worrying about a supply chain, a damaged box, or a lost tracking number. The creator economy has evolved, and the question is no longer whether you should share your expertise, but rather where to sell an online course to ensure you retain full control over your profits and your brand.
Many creators find themselves lured by the siren song of third-party marketplaces and hosted platforms that promise instant audiences. However, these platforms often come with a heavy price: high transaction fees, fragmented user experiences, and—perhaps most dangerously—the loss of your customer data. At Tevello, our mission is to turn any Shopify store into a digital learning powerhouse. We believe that the best place to grow your business is on a platform you already own and trust, where your digital products live right alongside your physical brand.
In this comprehensive guide, we will explore the different avenues available for selling digital education. We will break down the pros and cons of marketplaces, third-party SaaS platforms, and native Shopify integrations. You will learn how to evaluate costs, protect your brand identity, and leverage community features to build long-term stability. Ultimately, we will demonstrate why a native approach on Shopify is the most sustainable path for merchants who are serious about building an enduring digital learning business.
The Landscape of Digital Education: Where to Sell an Online Course
When you begin your journey into digital products, you are met with a dizzying array of options. These generally fall into three distinct categories: educational marketplaces, third-party hosted platforms, and native e-commerce integrations. Each serves a different purpose, but they are not created equal when it comes to long-term profitability and brand health.
Educational Marketplaces
Marketplaces are the shopping malls of the internet. They host thousands of courses across every imaginable topic. For a new creator with zero audience, these platforms provide a low barrier to entry. They handle the hosting, the payment processing, and even some of the discovery.
However, the convenience comes at a significant cost. Most marketplaces exert heavy control over your pricing, often forcing your premium content into deep-discount sales. Furthermore, they frequently take a massive percentage of your revenue—sometimes as much as 50% to 75% for sales they generate. Most importantly, you do not own the customer. If the platform decides to change its algorithm or shut down your account, your business vanishes overnight.
Third-Party Hosted SaaS Platforms
The next tier of options includes specialized software-as-a-service (SaaS) platforms. These tools allow you to build a dedicated course site. They offer more professional features than a marketplace, such as better branding and more control over your curriculum.
The primary drawback here is fragmentation. If you already have a brand website or a Shopify store, using a third-party SaaS platform means sending your customers to a different URL (e.g., your-brand.teachable.com). This breaks the customer journey, creates friction with multiple logins, and makes it harder to upsell physical products alongside your courses. These platforms also frequently charge "success fees" or transaction percentages on top of high monthly subscriptions.
Native Shopify Integration
The gold standard for modern merchants is a native integration within their existing Shopify ecosystem. This approach keeps everything under one roof: your domain, your checkout, and your customer data. When you integrate a tool like Tevello, you aren't just adding a course; you are expanding your store's capabilities.
We believe that keeping customers on your own URL is essential for brand loyalty. By using a native solution, you ensure that a customer who buys a physical product can seamlessly access their digital course using the same account and the same trusted Shopify checkout. This is the foundation of a "learning powerhouse" that builds Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) rather than just one-off transactions.
The Hidden Costs of Third-Party Platforms
When deciding where to sell an online course, the "sticker price" is rarely the whole story. Many platforms utilize complex tiered pricing structures that look affordable at first but become prohibitively expensive as your community grows.
The Problem with Per-User Fees
Many hosted platforms charge you more as you become more successful. If you suddenly have a viral hit and gain 5,000 students, those platforms might bump you into a "Professional" or "Enterprise" tier that costs hundreds of dollars more per month. This effectively punishes you for growth.
We take a different approach. We believe in providing a flat-rate plan that supports unlimited members. Whether you have ten students or ten thousand, your costs should remain predictable. This allows you to scale your marketing efforts with the confidence that your profit margins won't be eroded by arbitrary user limits.
The Sting of Transaction Fees
Beyond monthly subscriptions, transaction fees are the most significant "hidden" cost of digital selling. Some platforms take 5% to 10% of every single sale you make. If you are selling a $200 course, the platform might take $20 off the top for doing nothing more than hosting your video.
At Tevello, we reject this model. We provide predictable pricing without hidden transaction fees. We charge 0% transaction fees, meaning every dollar you earn goes directly into your pocket (minus your standard payment processor fees like Stripe or PayPal). Over a year, this can save a merchant thousands—or even tens of thousands—of dollars.
Why Your Shopify Store is the Best Hub for Courses
Shopify is already the most robust e-commerce engine in the world. It handles payments, taxes, and security with world-class efficiency. By choosing to sell your courses natively on Shopify, you leverage several massive advantages that external platforms simply cannot match.
One Single Source of Truth
Managing a business is hard enough without having to sync customer data between three different platforms. When your courses are native to Shopify, your customer profiles are unified. You can see that a customer bought a yoga mat three months ago and just signed up for your "Advanced Vinyasa" digital program. This data is invaluable for personalized marketing and customer support.
Unified Checkout Experience
Trust is the currency of the internet. When a customer is ready to buy, the last thing you want is to redirect them to an unfamiliar third-party checkout page. By staying on Shopify, you provide a unified login that reduces customer support friction. Your customers use the same Shopify Pay or Apple Pay setup they’ve used a hundred times before, which significantly increases conversion rates.
SEO and Brand Authority
Every time you send a customer to an external platform’s URL, you are building their SEO, not yours. By hosting your learning portal on your own domain, every click, every minute spent watching a video, and every community interaction contributes to your site’s authority. This keeps your brand at the center of the experience, rather than being a "tenant" on someone else's platform.
Tevello: Turning Shopify into a Learning Powerhouse
Our goal at Tevello was to build the tool we wished existed: a seamless, all-in-one ecosystem where physical products and digital learning live side-by-side. We didn't want merchants to have to choose between a powerful store and a powerful school.
Our Unlimited Plan
Transparency is a core value for us. We don't believe in locking essential features behind high-priced tiers. Our model is simple: The Unlimited Plan is $29.99 per month.
For that single price, you receive:
- Unlimited courses and students.
- Unlimited video hosting and bandwidth.
- Advanced community features.
- Drip content scheduling and interactive quizzes.
- Full integration with your Shopify theme.
This plan is designed to give you everything you need to grow without ever worrying about "feature gatekeeping." You can start your 14-day free trial and build your first course now to see exactly how these features fit into your existing store design.
Native Shopify Integration
Because we are built specifically for Shopify, the installation process is effortless. There are no complicated API keys to manage or external databases to connect. We provide all the key features for courses and communities directly within the Shopify admin interface you already know. This native approach ensures that your course pages look and feel like the rest of your store, maintaining a consistent aesthetic that reinforces your brand identity.
Practical Scenarios: How Real Merchants Succeed
To understand the power of selling digital products natively, let’s look at some practical, real-world scenarios. These are the types of business models we see thriving every day on the Shopify platform.
The Value of Bundling: The Crafting Professional
Imagine a merchant who sells premium yarn and crochet hooks. While their physical goods have steady demand, the margins are squeezed by shipping and material costs. By adding a "Mastering the Modern Stitch" video course, they create a high-margin digital product.
Instead of selling these separately, the merchant can bundle them. A customer can buy the "Beginner Crochet Kit" which includes the physical hooks and yarn, plus instant access to the digital course. This is exactly how one brand sold $112K+ by bundling courses. This strategy increases the average order value (AOV) and provides the customer with immediate gratification while they wait for their physical package to arrive.
Retention Through Education: The Photography Expert
For a store selling camera accessories, the challenge is often customer retention. Once a customer buys a tripod, when will they buy again? By creating a membership community or a series of specialized lighting courses, the merchant can transform a one-time buyer into a recurring subscriber.
By generating over €243,000 by upselling existing customers, brands can see that the real profit isn't in the initial sale, but in the ongoing relationship. When your courses live on Shopify, you can easily use automated emails to suggest the "Portrait Photography Masterclass" to anyone who recently purchased a portrait lens.
Building a Community: The Fitness Coach
For a merchant in the wellness space, community is everything. Selling a PDF workout plan is a one-time transaction, but hosting a "30-Day Transformation Challenge" with a social feed, member directory, and daily drip content creates an experience.
Using these retention strategies that drive repeat digital purchases, coaches can build a loyal following that feels connected to the brand and each other. The ability to offer community profiles and social feeds within the store means the merchant owns the conversation, rather than losing it to a Facebook group where distractions are everywhere.
Diving Into the Features: What Makes a Great Course?
When you are deciding where to sell an online course, the technical features of the platform will determine the quality of your student's experience. At Tevello, we’ve focused on the tools that actually move the needle for engagement and completion rates.
Unlimited Video Hosting
Many platforms charge you extra based on the amount of video you upload or the bandwidth your students consume. This is a massive "success tax." If your course becomes popular, your hosting bill skyrockets. With our Unlimited Plan, video hosting is included. You never have to worry about a "bandwidth exceeded" error or a surprise bill at the end of the month.
Drip Content and Scheduling
Not all information should be delivered at once. For complex topics, "drip" scheduling allows you to release lessons over time—perhaps one module every seven days. This prevents student burnout and keeps them coming back to your store week after week. It's a powerful tool for building a habit around your brand.
Quizzes and Assessments
To ensure your students are actually learning, interactive quizzes are essential. You can set up assessments at the end of each module. This not only adds value to the course but also gives students a sense of accomplishment. If unifying your stack is a priority, start by a simple, all-in-one price for unlimited courses.
Community and Engagement
Modern online learning is social. We provide member directories, profiles, and social feeds so students can interact. This turns a static course into a living community. When students can talk to each other and share their progress, they are much more likely to complete the course and recommend it to others.
The Financial Impact: Transaction Fees vs. Fixed Costs
Let’s talk numbers. When choosing where to sell an online course, you must calculate the long-term impact of your platform's pricing model.
If you are using an external platform that charges a 5% transaction fee and you sell $10,000 worth of courses in a month, you are paying $500 just in fees. Add a $99 monthly subscription, and your total cost is $599.
Now, compare that to Tevello. At $29.99 per month with 0% transaction fees, your total cost remains $29.99. In this scenario, you are saving $569 every single month. By comparing plan costs against total course revenue, it becomes clear that a flat-rate model is the only logical choice for a growing business.
We believe that you should keep 100% of what you earn. Your hard work in marketing and content creation shouldn't be taxed by the software you use to deliver it. This predictable pricing without hidden transaction fees allows you to reinvest those savings into better equipment, more ads, or even new product development.
Owning Your Customer Journey
One of the biggest risks of selling on third-party platforms is the lack of control over the customer journey. When a student finishes a lesson on an external site, they are often shown recommendations for other creators' courses. You are essentially paying to send your customers into a competitor's funnel.
When you install Tevello from the Shopify App Store today, you ensure that your store remains the destination. After a student completes a lesson, you can direct them to a related physical product in your store or an advanced-tier membership. You are building an ecosystem, not just a storefront.
This native approach is why successful creators are moving away from fragmented systems. They have seen the strategies for selling over 4,000 digital courses natively and realize that the most valuable asset they own is the direct relationship with their audience.
Getting Started: A Step-by-Step Path
Transitioning to a native Shopify course model is easier than most merchants realize. You don't need to be a developer to build a world-class learning experience.
- Install the App: Head to the Shopify App Store and add Tevello to your store.
- Start Your Trial: We offer a 14-day free trial so you can explore every feature.
- Build Your Curriculum: Use our intuitive builder to create modules and lessons. You can upload your videos directly or embed them from other sources.
- Customize the Look: Adjust the colors, fonts, and layout to match your brand's existing Shopify theme.
- Set Your Price: Create a new Shopify product for your course. You can sell it as a one-time purchase, a subscription, or as part of a bundle.
- Launch: Once you’re ready, publish your course and start welcoming students.
The beauty of this process is that you can build your entire curriculum before paying a cent. We want you to be absolutely certain that our platform is the right fit for your vision.
The Future of the Shopify Learning Powerhouse
The e-commerce world is shifting. Customers are looking for more than just products; they are looking for transformations. They don't just want the camera; they want to know how to take the photo. They don't just want the ingredients; they want the recipe for success.
By integrating digital learning into your Shopify store, you are positioning yourself at the forefront of this trend. You are providing a "full-stack" solution for your customers' needs. Whether you are teaching a craft, sharing business expertise, or building a fitness community, the key to success is providing value that goes beyond the physical.
We are committed to providing the tools that make this possible. From all the key features for courses and communities to our unwavering commitment to 0% transaction fees, we are here to support your growth every step of the way.
Conclusion
The decision of where to sell an online course is one of the most consequential choices you will make as a digital entrepreneur. While marketplaces offer a quick start, they often demand too much of your revenue and your brand's soul. Third-party SaaS platforms provide more tools but at the cost of a fragmented customer experience and mounting fees.
The future belongs to the merchants who own their platform. By building your course business natively on Shopify, you secure your data, protect your margins, and provide a world-class, unified experience for your customers. At Tevello, our mission is to empower you with a robust, all-in-one ecosystem where physical products, digital courses, and community engagement live side-by-side. You deserve a partner that celebrates your growth rather than taxing it.
To build your community without leaving Shopify, start by reviewing the Shopify App Store listing merchants install from.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I sell both physical products and digital courses together?
Yes, this is one of the primary advantages of using a native Shopify integration. You can create bundles where a physical item (like a kit or tool) automatically grants access to a digital course. This is a proven way to increase Average Order Value and provide immediate value to your customers.
How do I handle video hosting and bandwidth?
With our Unlimited Plan, video hosting and bandwidth are included at no extra cost. You can upload your videos directly to our platform, and we handle the delivery to your students. This ensures high-quality playback without the risk of surprise fees as your student count grows.
What happens to my customer data?
Because the app is native to Shopify, you own 100% of your customer data. Every student who signs up is a customer in your Shopify admin. This allows you to use Shopify’s native marketing tools, integrations, and analytics to grow your business, unlike third-party marketplaces that often hide customer emails from you.
Is it hard to migrate my courses from another platform?
Not at all. Our interface is designed to be intuitive for business owners of all technical levels. You can easily move your content over, and because we use Shopify’s native customer accounts, your students will enjoy a unified login that reduces customer support friction. Many of our most successful merchants migrated to us to escape high fees and fragmented branding.
